Lofty promises, limited results
By Erin Allday and Joaquin Palomino,
San Francisco Chronicle [cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky]
| 09. 06. 2018
After 14 years and $3 billion, has California's bet on stem cells paid off?
It was an extraordinary political proposal: Approve a $3 billion bond measure to fund the cutting-edge science of stem cell therapy, and soon some of the world’s cruelest diseases and most disabling injuries could be eradicated.
The 2004 measure was Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative. The campaign to pass it was led by a Palo Alto real estate developer whose son suffered from an incurable illness that he believed stem cells, the keystones of human biology, could heal. Other supporters included preeminent scientists, Hollywood celebrities, business leaders and elite investors.
THE MIRACLE CELL
This series explores the hope and reality of the revolutionary science of stem cell therapy. It focuses on what has transpired since 2004, when California voters approved a $3 billion bond measure to fund stem cell research with the promise that it soon would produce new treatments for incurable diseases.
In four parts, it follows the stories of patients desperately seeking remedies; probes the for-profit clinics where unproven and unregulated treatments are being offered; takes you into the labs and hospital rooms where...
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Bioethics needs an update
The National Research Act is now 50 years old. It was signed into law on July 12, 1974, as a direct response to publicity about the 1932 “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The Hastings Bioethics Forum celebrated its anniversary with an...
Image courtesy National Human Genome Research Institute
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to encourage effective medical advances while also ensuring that patients and research subjects are protected. This dual mandate demands tricky judgment calls that are made more difficult by outside pressures of several kinds, political, judicial, and especially commercial. This April story at Bloomberg examines one deeply troubling pattern of regulatory capture:
Americans Are Paying Billions to Take Drugs That Don’t Work
Companies are increasingly...
By Sarah Kliff and Azeen Ghorayshi, The New York Times | 07.15.2024